Glass plates:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Certainly when concerning plants, one image can say a lot more than just a long description. And this is no recent realisation, as it once again became clear when a collection of glass photographic plates dating from between 1880 and 1930 was rediscovered in the Botanic Garden. Just as today – while the digitisation project DOE!2 runs in full swing – pictures of herbarium specimens were also taken back then. Long before the advent of digital photography, images were captured on light-sensitive plates. The physical support varied; glass plates were used in the case of this project’s specimens. These plates, just like today’s digital copies represented a safeguard of the originals and could be sent away so that the specimen might be studied from a distance. Of the represented specimens which you will come across in this project, some are still in our collection while others have unfortunately been lost or were loans from other institutions and have meanwhile been returned.
That is also a reason why it is valuable, not only for biology but also from a historical point of view, to make these glass photographic plates and the label data of pictured specimens digitally available.
Keywords (Latin):
Tabellae photographicae, Hortus Botanicus Meise, Botanica.
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